


a viper

by kwritten



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:03:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bonnie practices saying, “I’m okay."</p><p> </p><p>Through 4.1/2, but not really (Bonnie’s head-space during that initial conversation with Stefan, references to S3 – all vague and relatively non-spoilery)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a viper

_I'm okay, really._  
  
She said it to the tea kettle when it screamed through the silence of her house. She spoke aloud to the silence, listening to the sound of the words, feeling them on her tongue.  
  
And like through a crystal ball, she saw Caroline smile and hold up her head, strong in the face of defeat and shame; watched Elena hold someone else, feel their pain instead of her own. Like through a mirror she saw their own eyes reflected in hers, felt their expressions on her face. She felt her body sink into the moment, into the feel of the tea kettle in her hand as she poured another cup of tea, the cold floor against her bare feet, the soft brush of wool against her arm. She felt in her body the purpose of movement she had seen countless times.  
  
Moments were all they had these days. Slips of time that whispered to them of all that they had lost. And it was sometimes too easy to sink into it and feel it more deeply than the harried, rushed moments when the adrenaline pounded and the tears fell.  
  
It was easier to live in the falsity of smiles than the reality of tears.

 _I'm okay, I promise._  
  
She said it with the whisper of a smile, one that told him she wasn't, one that let him in on the secret: that she wasn't strong. And he nodded and continued, smiling to himself as he eased her along, treading delicately for the sake of her.  
  
She had learned to be calculating. She had learned how to say it and make them all believe the opposite. She had watched Elena fool the world enough times in the past three years to be an expert. That soft smile, that gentle head tilt that said: _I need you to stop worrying, to stop asking, because nothing is going to be okay again. Please let me pretend._  
  
They learned from the best, these three.  
  
They learned from each other.  
  
  
 _I'm fine._  
  
She said to the cup of tea in her hand, not looking up at him as he sat on the couch beside her. She felt her heart beating in her chest and slowed it. She could do that now, she had learned... _(she could do a lot, she found - when it was about her and not about them)_ ... she swallowed slowly and looked up at him with wide eyes, her heart beating (deliberate and even), her hands still, her blood skipping through her body at a normal rhythm _(though it pounded, though the adrenaline of sitting beside him, of wanting to destroy him - of knowing so well that she could, it heated her blood, it warmed her body, it pounded in her ears)_ ... but the keen senses of the vampire sitting beside her knew only the cool calm of a body in stillness.  
  
She knew how to make him believe it wasn't true - knew how to allow her hands to shake at the right moment, how to hold her head just so - as if it weighed her down, as if movement was difficult under so much emotional duress, but she smiled in spite of it. She smiled and straightened and shook her head.  
  
Just like Caroline.  
  
Just like Elena.  
  
Their actions a roadmap on her body, taking away the need to think of a way all her own to convince him, showing him what she needed him to see, revealing a secret they all pretended was a truth that needed hidden.  
  
 _(She thought - not for the first time - of what it would be like to hurt him. To fire off the intricate guns in his head, allow his body to turn on itself until he crawled along the floor and begged and cursed her. She smiled inwardly at the sight of it, of him at the mercy of her strength. Until, maybe, she relieved the pressure just enough – just enough to remind him she was there when she took from him. Just enough to keep him crying out while she took his body into her own and wrung him dry. Just enough to keep him wanting release, when she took her own._

_And she would say aloud to him between gasps and moans, as he lay beneath her and sobbed, as she forced him to listen, “This is for Caroline. This is for Elena. This is for my childhood. This is for our lives. This is for the family you stripped from me. This is for thinking I couldn’t. Because I can.”)_

 

But she just sipped her tea and nodded.  
  
  
 _Everything’s fine._  
  
  
“Strong and Sexy” was a phrase just for women. Made to make them feel as if it were true.  
  
She thinks of the films that they grew up with - the ones Caroline would make them watch until they could all quote every line. It was always the same: strong and fierce meant everything at the beginning, when the woman was proud and happy, but in order to win - in order to be loved - she had to expose her weakness. Their worlds torn down to make way for epic romance and bliss. Everything lost in order to be gifted this one, precious gift.  
  
Being a princess in a tower doesn't mean that you need rescuing. Sometimes it means you want to watch the world go by without having to be a part of it. But then someone always has to wreck the most well thought out plan, and then there you are: blind, wandering the world with a screaming burden, and that well-meaning prince is nowhere to be found.

 

 

_I can do it._

 

 

 

She sometimes remembers that hallway, looking over at that brother -  so exposed, so bloody, so helpless. She walked away with a shiver.  _Such a frightened girl, pretending to be strong._

 

If only they had known how desperately she wanted to run her fingernails down his chest, bite his shoulder so hard he bled - lapping up the blood with her tongue like a cat - crawling up and down his body until they were both breathless with want.   
  
Because they were always enemies and they were never really friends and sometimes she felt certain she could wring from his body something more precious and more daring than either. And it wouldn't matter if she got more than she gave.  
  
That's what he'd do.  
  
  
 _I'm fine._

 

 

 

That’s what they all did, in the end.

 

Gave more than they could afford to lose. Believed, as much as they shouldn’t, in the weakness others perceived. Let it take control of them. Fed into the perception to make it stop. Presenting a package of weakness wrapped in a façade of their own making.

 

When he left, leaving behind a broken, helpless girl all alone in her large house, skipping down the steps content in himself and her pain, Bonnie thought of what they could do – they three – thought of what  _she_  could do and laughed.

 

Laughed so hard she fell to the ground and rocked and rocked until she cried, holding her knees to her chest and shaking with sobs.

 

 

 

If only they knew.

 

Behind every sad smile... Behind every wide-eyed confession… Behind every self-flagellating sacrifice… Behind all the evidence to the contrary…

 

Was a viper waiting to strike.


End file.
